I am having trouble with my machine overheating. I found two useful tools to look at the temperature on the cores of the processor. The programs are:
RealTemp - This program will monitor the temperature on each of the cores (for any modern Intel processor) and also periodically log the results to a file.
Tpfancontrol - This is a program specifically for ThinkPads which shows the temperature and allows you to control the fan speed somewhat. It does show the fan speed and how it changes as the temperature on the cores change.